EE Prof. and Dean of Engineering Tsu-Jae King Liu as been elected to the 2019 Silicon Valley Engineering Council (SVEC) Hall of Fame. Inductees must have demonstrated significant engineering or technical achievements, provided significant guidance in new and developing fields of engineering-based technology, and/or have managed or directed an organization making noteworthy contributions in design, manufacturing, production, or service through the uses of engineering principles and applications. They also must have contributed significantly to one or more technical societies and accomplished significant community service activities (or have provided noteworthy advice to governmental committees, etc.). King Liu is known for her contributions to nanoscale MOS transistors, memory devices, and MEMS devices. Other EECS inductees include Profs. Randy Katz (2018), Chenming Hu (2017), Paul Gray (2015), David Hodges (2012), and David Patterson (2005).

Diane Greene makes Americas 50

CS alumnus Diane Greene (M.S. '88), the CEO of Google Cloud, has been named to Data Economy's list of Americas 50: The world’s first top 50 North, Central and South American influencers. The list highlights "personalities who are leading data centres, cloud, edge computing and data through charting new innovations or technological breakthroughs, sheer investment or business acumen, or exceptional entrepreneurial skillsets."

Barbara Simons to be awarded Athena Lifetime Achievement Award

2005 CS Distinguished Alumna Barbara Simons (Ph.D. '81) will be receiving the Athena Lifetime Achievement Award at the CITRIS Women in Tech Symposium on Friday, 11/16. Simons, who is a past president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), is board chair of Verified Voting, a non-partisan organization that advocates for reliable and secure voting practices. She is the author of “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?” and is a long-time champion for programs to increase diversity in computer science and engineering. She will not be able to attend the conference but will make an appearance in a short video.

IP paper wins 2018 ACM SenSys Test of Time Award

A paper written by CS Prof. David Culler and alumnus Jonathan Hui (M.S. '05/Ph.D. '08) in 2008 titled "IP is Dead, Long Live IP for Wireless Sensor Networks" has won the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys) 2018 Test of Time Award. The paper dispelled the notion that IP cannot run on wireless embedded sensors and made a long term impact on standards like 6LoWPAN and platforms like Thread. The award recognizes papers that are at least 10 years old and have had long lasting impact on networked embedded sensing system science and engineering. Culler previously won this award in both 2014 and 2015.

A paper titled “Graphical Lasso and Thresholding: Equivalence and Closed-form Solutions” by IEOR PhD candidate Salar Fattahi and EE Assistant Prof. Somayeh Sojoudi has won the 2018 Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Data Mining (DM) Best Paper Award. The paper compares the computationally-heavy Graphical Lasso (GL) technique, a popular method for learning the structure of an undirected graphical model, with a numerically-cheap heuristic method that is based on simply thresholding the sample covariance matrix. By analyzing the properties of this conic optimization problem, the paper shows that its true complexity is indeed linear (both in time and in memory) for sparse graphical models and solves instance as large as 80,000×80,000 (more than 3.2 billion variables) in less than 30 minutes on a standard laptop computer, while other state-of-the-art methods do not converge within 4 hours. The award recognizes excellence among DM members, particularly its student members, and was announced at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 5th.

EE Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has won the 2018 Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) Pioneering Achievement Award. This award honors a person for a lifetime of outstanding contributions within the scope of electronic design automation, as evidenced by ideas pioneered in publications, industrial products, or other relevant contributions. The award is based on the impact of the contributions throughout the nominee’s lifetime. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli is known for his contributions to cyber-physical systems and design automation. He co-founded two companies in the field: Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys, Inc.

Teresa Meng wins ACM SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award

EECS alumna Theresa H. Meng (M.S. '85/Ph.D. '88 advisor: David Messerschmitt) has won the 2018 Association of Computing Machinery (ACM ) SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award. This award is given for significant and lasting contributions to the research on mobile computing and communications and wireless networking. Meng, who is a Professor Emerita at Stanford University and founder of Atheros Communications Inc., was cited "for groundbreaking research, engineering and entrepreneurial leadership to make Wi-Fi faster, lower power, and lower cost."

EE Associate Prof. Robert Pilawa-Podgurski is the 2018 recipient of the IEEE Education Society Mac E. Van Valkenburg Award. This award is given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to teaching unusually early in their professional careers as evidenced by teaching performance, development of new teaching methods, and curricular innovation in fields of interest to the IEEE Education Society. The citation was "for his demonstrated passion for teaching and commitment to individual student growth, and his curriculum innovations in hands-on learning in the area of electric power and energy systems".

Stuart Russell named Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford

Prof. Stuart Russell has been elected as an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College at Oxford University, his alma mater. Warden of Wadham College, Ken Macdonald QC praised Russell for his scholarship in the field of Artificial Intelligence, his work with the United Nations and with former US President, Barack Obama. Russell has devoted his career to the study of AI, including such topics as the interaction of knowledge and machine learning, the unification of logic and probability, and metareasoning (reasoning about reasoning). Other Wadham Fellows include the late Jeremy Knowles, chemist and former Dean of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the Anglican communion.

Laura Waller and Ming Wu named OSA Fellows

EE Prof. Ming Wu and Associate Prof. Laura Waller have been named Fellows of the Optical Society of America (OSA) class of 2019. OSA Fellows are members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics. No more than 10 percent of the total OSA membership may be Fellows at any given time, making each year’s honorees a highly selective group.